Information privacy or data protection laws prohibit the disclosure or misuse of information held on private individuals. Over 80 countries and independent territories have now adopted comprehensive data protection laws including nearly every country in Europe and many in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Africa.[1] The US is notable for not having adopted a comprehensive information privacy law but rather having adopted limited sectoral laws in some areas.

These laws are based on Fair Information Practice, first developed in the United States in the 1970s by the Department for Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). The basic principles of data protection are:

For all data collected there should be a stated purpose.

Information collected by an individual cannot be disclosed to other organizations or individuals unless specifically authorized by law or by consent of the individual

Records kept on an individual should be accurate and up to date

There should be mechanisms for individuals to review data about them, to ensure accuracy. This may include periodic reporting

Data should be deleted when it is no longer needed for the stated purpose

Transmission of personal information to locations where "equivalent" personal data protection cannot be assured is prohibited

Some data is too sensitive to be collected, unless there are extreme circumstances (e.g., sexual orientation, religion)

PIPEDA specifies the rules to govern collection, use or disclosure of the personal information in the course of recognizing the right of privacy of individuals with respect to their personal information. It also specifies the rules for the organizations to collect, use, and disclose personal information.

Individuals who collect, use, or disclose personal information for personal purpose and use.

Organizations which collect, use, or disclose personal information only for the purpose of journalist, art or literary.

As specified in PIPEDA:

"Personal Information" means information about an identifiable individual, but does not include the name, title or business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization.

"Organization"means an association, a partnership, a person and a trade union.

"federal work, undertaking or business" means any work, undertaking or business that is within the legislative authority of Parliament. Including

a work, undertaking or business that is operated or carried on for or in connection with navigation and shipping, whether inland or maritime, including the operation of ships and transportation by ship anywhere in Canada;

a railway, canal, telegraph or other work or undertaking that connects a province with another province, or that extends beyond the limits of a province;

a line of ships that connects a province with another province, or that extends beyond the limits of a province;

a ferry between a province and another province or between a province and a country other than Canada;

aerodromes, aircraft or a line of air transportation;

a radio broadcasting station;

a bank;

a work that, although wholly situated within a province, is before or after its execution declared by Parliament to be for the general advantage of Canada or for the advantage of two or more provinces;

a work, undertaking or business outside the exclusive legislative authority of the legislatures of the provinces; and

a work, undertaking or business to which federal laws, within the meaning of section 2 of the Oceans Act, apply under section 20 of that Act and any regulations made under paragraph 26(1)(k) of that Act.

The right to data privacy is heavily regulated and actively enforced in Europe. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions. The European Court of Human Rights has given this article a very broad interpretation in its jurisprudence. According to the Court's case law the collection of information by officials of the state about an individual without their consent always falls within the scope of Article 8. Thus, gathering information for the official census, recording fingerprints and photographs in a police register, collecting medical data or details of personal expenditures and implementing a system of personal identification has been judged to raise data privacy issues.

Any state interference with a person's privacy is only acceptable for the Court if three conditions are fulfilled:

The directive contains a number of key principles with which member states must comply. Anyone processing personal data must comply with the eight enforceable principles of good practice.[4] They state that the data must be:

Fairly and lawfully processed.

Processed for limited purposes.

Adequate, relevant and not excessive.

Accurate.

Kept no longer than necessary.

Processed in accordance with the data subject's rights.

Secure.

Transferred only to countries with adequate protection.

Personal data covers both facts and opinions about the individual[citation needed]. It also includes information regarding the intentions of the data controller towards the individual, although in some limited circumstances exemptions will apply. With processing, the definition is far wider than before. For example, it incorporates the concepts of "obtaining", "holding" and "disclosing"{{[5] Citation needed|date=November 2009}}.

All EU member states adopted legislation pursuant this directive or adapted their existing laws. Each country also has its own supervisory authority to monitor the level of protection.[citation needed]

Because of this, in theory the transfer of personal information from the EU to the US is prohibited when equivalent privacy protection is not in place in the US. American companies that would work with EU data must comply with the Safe Harbour framework. The core principles of data protected are limited collection, consent of the subject, accuracy, integrity, security, subject right of review and deletion. As a result, customers of international organizations such as Amazon and eBay in the EU have the ability to review and delete information, while Americans do not. In the United States the equivalent guiding philosophy is the Code of Fair Information Practice (FIP).

The difference in language here is important: in the United States the debate is about privacy where in the European Community the debate is on data protection. Moving the debate from privacy to data protection is seen by some philosophers as a mechanism for moving forward in the practical realm while not requiring agreement on fundamental questions about the nature of privacy.

In Switzerland, the right to privacy is guaranteed in article 13 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. The Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (DPA)[9] and the Swiss Federal Data Protection Ordinance (DPO) entered into force on July 1, 1993. The latest amendments of the DPA and the DPO entered into force on January 1, 2008.

The DPA applies to the processing of personal data by private persons and federal government agencies. Unlike the data protection legislation of many other countries, the DPA protects both personal data pertaining to natural persons and legal entities.[10]

Some data files must be registered with the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner before they are created. In the case of a transfer of personal data outside of Switzerland, special requirements need to be met and, depending on the circumstances, the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner must be informed before the transfer is made.[10]

Most Swiss cantons have enacted their own data protection laws regulating the processing of personal data by cantonal and municipal bodies.

Data privacy is not highly legislated or regulated in the U.S..[12] In the United States, access to private data contained in for example third-party credit reports may be sought when seeking employment or medical care, or making automobile, housing, or other purchases on credit terms. Although partial regulations exist, there is no all-encompassing law regulating the acquisition, storage, or use of personal data in the U.S. In general terms, in the U.S., whoever can be troubled to key in the data, is deemed to own the right to store and use it, even if the data was collected without permission, except to any extent regulated by laws and rules such as the federal Communications Act's provisions, and implementing rules from the Federal Communications Commission, regulating use of customer proprietary network information (CPNI). For instance the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), are all examples of U.S. federal laws with provisions which tend to promote information flow efficiencies.

The Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to grant a right of privacy to individuals in Griswold v. Connecticut. Very few states, however, recognize an individual's right to privacy, a notable exception being California. An inalienable right to privacy is enshrined in the California Constitution's article 1, section 1, and the California legislature has enacted several pieces of legislation aimed at protecting this right. The California Online Privacy Protection Act (OPPA) of 2003 requires operators of commercial web sites or online services that collect personal information on California residents through a web site to conspicuously post a privacy policy on the site and to comply with its policy.

Recently, lawmakers in several states have proposed legislations to change the way online businesses handle user information. Among those generating significant attention are several Do Not Track legislations and the Right to Know Act (California Bill AB 1291). The California Right to Know Act, if passed, would require every business which keeps user information to provide its user a copy of stored information when requested.[13] The bill faced heavy oppositions from trade groups representing companies such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook, and failed to pass.[14]

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. HIPAA is also known as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA-Public Law 104-191), effective August 21, 1996. The basic idea of HIPAA is that an individual who is a subject of individually identifiable health information should have:

Established procedures for the exercise of individual health information privacy rights.

The use and disclosure of individual health information should be authorized or required.

One difficulty with HIPAA is that there must be a mechanism to authenticate the patient who demands access to his/her data. As a result, medical facilities have begun to ask for Social Security Numbers from patients, thus arguably decreasing privacy by simplifying the act of correlating health records with other records.[15] The issue of consent is problematic under HIPAA, because the medical providers simply make care contingent upon agreeing to the privacy standards in practice.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act has been effective in preventing the proliferation of specious so-called private credit guides. Previously, private credit guides offered detailed, if unreliable, information on easily identifiable individuals. Before the Fair Credit Reporting Act salacious unsubstantiated material could be included, in fact gossip was widely included in credit reports. EPIC has a FCRA page. The Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the consumer reporting industry, also has a Web site with FCRA information.[1]

The Fair Credit Reporting Act provides consumers the ability to view, correct, contest, and limit the uses of credit reports. The FCRA also protects the credit agency from the charge of negligent release in the case of misrepresentation by the requester. Credit agencies must ask the requester the purpose of a requested information release, but need make no effort to verify the truth of the requester's assertions. In fact, the courts have ruled that, "The Act clearly does not provide a remedy for an illicit or abusive use of information about consumers" (Henry v Forbes, 1976). It is widely believed that in order to avoid the FCRA, ChoicePoint was created by Equifax at which time the parent company copied all its records to its newly created subsidiary. ChoicePoint is not a credit reporting agency, and thus FCRA does not apply.[17]

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act similarly limits dissemination of information about a consumer's financial transactions. It prevents creditors or their agents from disclosing the fact that an individual is in debt to a third party, although it allows creditors and their agents to attempt to obtain information about a debtor's location. It limits the actions of those seeking payment of a debt. For example, debt collection agencies are prohibited from harassment or contacting individuals at work. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (which actually gutted consumer protections, for example in case of bankruptcy resulting from medical cost) limited some of these controls on debtors.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) establishes criminal sanctions for interception of electronic communication. However, the loopholes are so large as to render the Act effectively meaningless. For example, consent can be implied to any reading of electronic communications by accepting employment with an organization that practices surveillance against its employees.

In the US additional statutes cover various types of private information. For example, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), enacted in 1974, requires parent or adult student consent to access student records for most purposes.

Several US federal agencies have privacy statutes that cover their collection and use of private information. These include the Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, and the National Center for Education Statistics (under the Education Sciences Reform Act). In addition, the CIPSEA statute protects confidentiality of data collected by federal statistical agencies.

Unlike the U.S. approach to privacy protection, which relies on industry-specific legislation, regulation and self-regulation, the European Union relies on comprehensive privacy legislation. The European Directive on Data Protection that went into effect in October 1998, includes, for example, the requirement to create government data protection agencies, registration of databases with those agencies, and in some instances prior approval before personal data processing may begin. In order to bridge these different privacy approaches and provide a streamlined means for U.S. organizations to comply with the Directive, the U.S. Department of Commerce in consultation with the European Commission developed a "safe harbor" framework. The safe harbor - approved by the EU in July 2000 - is a way for U.S. companies to comply with European privacy laws.